Traditionally, market research firms needing surveys obtain price bids from suppliers of survey panels. Survey panels are a collection of potential survey participants (i.e., “respondents”) available to complete online surveys. The supplier may quote a price per completed survey, e.g., $15 per complete. A survey requiring 5,000 completed surveys would therefore cost $75,000. The nature of each survey may be taken into consideration in determining the price a supplier charges a market research firm (or other survey buyer) to conduct a survey. For example, it is implicitly difficult to find survey respondents who own a Ferrari than survey respondents who own a Honda. Therefore, a supplier would charge a higher price for a survey requiring the survey respondents to be Ferrari owners than for a survey requiring the survey respondents to be Honda owners.
Online surveys may include demographic questions designed to determine whether the respondent meets predefined demographic criteria (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, and/or income), targeted questions designed to determine whether the respondent meets predefined familiarity and/or utilization criteria for a certain product or service category (e.g., respondents who use a particular product, such as a beverage, at least three times per week), and substantive questions designed to gather objective data points for statistical and other analysis. Only respondents who meet the predefined criteria for the demographic questions and the targeted questions are prompted to respond to the substantive questions of the online survey. Respondents who do not meet the predefined criteria for any demographic or targeted question are terminated from that particular online survey (i.e., do not qualify for the survey). Also, a respondent may not qualify for an online survey because the respondent enters information indicating that he/she is in a category that is full. For example, surveys may seek a predefined mixture of respondents, such as 50% male and 50% female, and a predefined total number of 200 respondents. In this example, if 100 females have already responded to the survey, the next female respondent will not qualify for the survey.
Incidence and conversion are two measurements of the intrinsic value of a particular survey. In other words, these measurements provide a basis for a supplier to set a price for a particular survey. Incidence is the percentage of the number of completed surveys divided by the number of respondents passing all demographic questions. A higher incidence value indicates a lower value of the survey (i.e., it is easier to find respondents for the survey and the survey price is lower). Conversion is the percentage of the number of completed surveys divided by the number of respondents passing all demographic and targeted questions. Similarly, a higher conversion value indicates a lower value of the survey. Because there is no standard definition of incidence or conversion, these measurements may be defined differently by different individuals. Nevertheless, a higher conversion or incidence value indicates a lower value of the survey.
Another indication of the intrinsic value of a particular survey is the length of interview (LOI). The longer it takes a respondent to complete a survey (i.e., longer LOI), the more difficult it is to find respondents. For two surveys with the same incidence rates, a survey with a higher LOI will be more expensive than a survey with a lower LOI.
Because multiple suppliers oftentimes must be engaged to meet the demographic requirements of a survey, intermediate companies called routers may be utilized to automate aspects of managing the multiple suppliers. Routers utilize software to route respondents to an inventory of surveys. The router module of the survey management system has a two-fold responsibility. First, it is responsible for routing the respondents to appropriate surveys. Second, the router must view the survey pool holistically and affirm that the surveys collectively have a high chance of completion. For the latter responsibility, the router has to employ a combination of the contradictory aspects of randomization and prioritization to disperse respondents efficiently. Intelligent dispersion of respondents is one of the core features of a router. Thus, when a respondent fails to meet demographic criteria or familiarity/use criteria for a given online survey, the router matches the respondent's information against other online surveys in the pool and prompts the respondent with more questions to determine whether the respondent meets the demographic and familiarity/use criteria for a second online survey. If the respondent qualifies, he/she is prompted to respond to the substantive questions of the second online survey. Otherwise, the router continues to prompt the respondent with more questions for different online surveys in the pool.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional router platform capable of hosting a plurality of surveys on behalf of a plurality of buyers (e.g., market research companies). The surveys can be accessed by a supplier's panel of respondents. In the example depicted in FIG. 1, the router platform is hosting Surveys S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5 for Buyers B1, B2, B3, B4, and B5, respectively. The router platform is also hosting Surveys S6, S7, S8, and S9 for Buyers B6, B7, B8, and B9, respectively. The supplier of Panel A has agreed with each of the Buyers B1-B5 to a survey price (e.g., $15/completed survey) for each of the Surveys S1-S5. The supplier of Panel B has agreed with each of the Buyers B6-B9 to a survey price (e.g., $20/completed survey) for each of Surveys S6-S9. Each price may be determined by one or more intrinsic value indicators of an online survey, such as incidence, conversion, and/or length of interview.
FIG. 2 illustrates a representative routing process within a conventional router platform. With reference to FIG. 2, Respondent R1 of Panel A may be sent to the router platform for Survey S3. If Respondent R1 fails to qualify for Survey S3, the router platform will send Respondent R1 to another online survey on the router platform. For example, the router platform may send Respondent R1 to Survey S8 despite the fact that the supplier of Panel A and Buyer B8 have not negotiated a price per completed survey for Survey S8. In such situations, Respondent R1 is considered a “routed respondent” in Survey S8.
Traditionally, a router platform uses a standard rate or price per completed survey for routed respondents from each panel. For example, the supplier of Panel A could have set a price of $10 per online survey completed by one of its respondents who were routed to an out-of-network survey (i.e., a survey for which the supplier has not negotiated a survey price with the buyer) on the router platform. Also, each buyer traditionally sets a budget or cap for each online survey completed by a respondent routed to its survey from an out-of-network panel. For example, Buyer B8 could have set a budget of $17 per online survey completed by a respondent other than Panel B respondents. A panel's routed pricing is usually lower than its pricing for in-network surveys (i.e., surveys for which the supplier has negotiated a survey price with the buyer) since the respondent is yielding revenue when otherwise none would be due since the respondent was terminated from the in-network survey. Suppliers and buyers typically will not have access to each other's pricing for routed respondents.
In the foregoing example, Panel A would be paid $10 (its routed price per complete) for Respondent R1's completed Survey S8. The fact that Buyer B8 set a budget of $17 per routed complete for Survey S8 suggests that Panel A was underpaid for Respondent R1's completed Survey S8. While the supplier of Panel A could set a higher price for each routed complete, such as $25, this higher rate may prevent Panel A's respondents from being routed to other surveys on the router platform since the buyers have the ability of setting caps or budgets for routed completes of its surveys. For example, if Panel A's routed price per complete was $25, Respondent R1 would not have been routed to Survey S8 because Panel A's price per routed complete would be higher than Buyer B8's budget of $17 per routed complete for Survey S8. Without access to the intrinsic value indicators of the out-of-network surveys, the supplier has little to no data on which to base its bid price for the completion of out-of-network surveys. As a result, suppliers inevitably lose revenue due to its routed pricing not being based on the value of the surveys to which its respondents are routed.